‘Tokyo Vice’ Revisits a Faded Underworld

By 2013, Daniel Radcliffe had been attached to play Adelstein, but the film eventually fell through. (Adelstein believes the Japanese film industry’s lingering fear of the yakuza was a factor; others involved chalked it up to more mundane financing issues.) When the production company Endeavor Content, which acquired the rights, began work in 2019 to turn “Tokyo Vice” into a series instead, Lesher became an executive producer and Rogers became the showrunner.

“It’s quite rare to be given the keys to the kingdom when you’ve never made any TV before, especially for a U.S. show on a scale previously never undertaken in Japan,” Rogers said.

Fortunately, he had some help. Poul, who had produced series like HBO’s “Six Feet Under” and “The Newsroom,” lived in Japan in the 1980s and landed his first major film gig there, as an associate producer on Paul Schrader’s “Mishima” (1985). His fluency in Japanese and deep familiarity with the culture were indispensable during the shoot. Mann, the celebrated director of police thrillers like “Heat” and the journalism drama, “The Insider,” had his first big success with another crime series with a similar title and similarly vivid sense of place: “Miami Vice.”

Mann has long been mesmerized by Tokyo and Japan, but this was his first opportunity to work there. His fascination with the architecture, design and ambience of Tokyo’s urbanity is apparent in the pilot episode, which sets the show’s visual tone.

“My admiration of Japanese aesthetics is such that it’s difficult for me to walk 100 meters down the road there,” he said in a video call from Los Angeles. “I will become captivated by the design on the cover of a manhole. Then take another three steps and stop to admire the intricate masonry of a curb. So I am hopeless in Tokyo.”

Adelstein’s desire to uncover mortifying truths in a culture permeated by archaic codes of polite secrecy resonated with Mann, he said, and the director wanted to ensure that this sensibility shone through in Elgort’s portrayal.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/01/arts/television/tokyo-vice-hbo-max.html